Luke 11:27-28 And it came to pass, as he spoke these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said to him… I. GOD INTENDS HIS WORD TO BLESS MAN. It is sent for this purpose. Truth is God's greatest boon to man. II. IF THIS BE SO, THEN THE BLESSING COMES OBVIOUSLY ENOUGH BY HEARING. The most natural way of conveying the truth is by speech. It is the earliest, the readiest, perhaps it shall be the latest. In many senses it will ever be the best. In simple, earnest speech you get all the requisites, truth itself in its appositeness, punctuation, emphasis, and, above all, the living soul transmitted by the living voice. III. EVEN WHEN THE WORD IS PURE, AND THE PREACHER A TRUE MAN, PREACHER AND TRUTH ARE NOT ENOUGH. TO HAVE THE BLESSING THERE MUST BE THE INWARD HEARING AS WELL AS THE OUTWARD. Nothing will serve but the actual contact of truth with the spiritual intelligence, the cordial reception of the quickening Word, and its verification in the stillness of the soul's depths. The Spirit quickeneth the Word by quickening the man, and, again, the man by the Word. Christ's words let in the Spirit to listening hearts, for they were spirit and life. IV. THE TRUTH MUST BE KEPT IN ORDER TO THE BLESSING. It must be kept, first, by spiritual means — by prayer, meditation, and constant endeavour of the soul to blend and assimilate the truth with itself, till they become, as it were, one. But nothing gives the truth a greater fixity in our nature and makes it ours so truly as embodying it in act and deed. It is at hand, it must be grasped; floating as sentiment and feeling, it must be secured, organized, converted into facts, and so into history. Truth is intended to be practised — it cannot otherwise pass into life. 1. When the heart has learned to endorse the truth, the outward doing is most natural and easy. 2. The nature that keeps the Word is blessed by being itself ennobled. As we learn to live by truth and for truth, we have sympathy with God. 3. And the blessing power of the truth thus heard and thus cherished is continuous. V. BUT WHAT ABOUT HEARING AND NOT KEEPING? One cannot conceive of anything sadder. For hearing prepares a man for a higher test. We go to be examined in our own class, and thence depart to our own place. And the most tragic of all earth's other tragedies appear to me necessarily to fall far short of this spiritual one. To have looked into the highest, and sunk to the lowest, to have had the noblest issues in our grasp, and to have preferred these miserable husks of self-indulgence and self-contentment! (T. Islip.) Parallel Verses KJV: And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. |
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